Category: Service announcements

Xerte Downtime 7th January 2026

Posted on by Martin Nutbeem

IT Services will be carrying out an upgrade on the Xerte Server Wednesday 7th January 2026. This will complete postponed work from 1st December. 

Access to both the Xerte authoring tool and projects hosted on Xerte will be intermittently available during the day. This may result in students being unable to view published Xerte objects for short periods during that day. We apologise for any inconvenience this downtime may cause.

The Xerte upgrade will take us to Xerte 3.14. This will bring security improvements, bug fixes, and a variety of enhancements to page templates. There are also improvements to accessibility functionality. You can read more about Xerte 3.14 enhancements in its release notes.

Re/Play Issue: Pausing and Resuming Recordings

Posted on by david.c.morgan

We are aware of an issue affecting playback when a Re/Play presentation is paused and resumed during recording. Our supplier has identified the cause and is working on a fix, which will be included in a future version update (release date to be confirmed).

Temporary workaround

The problem appears when users pause and resume recording too quickly. To avoid this, please advise presenters to wait at least 5 seconds between selecting pause and resume.

We’ll provide further updates as soon as the fix is available.

[Resolved] Some Re/Play lectures not recorded

Posted on by Pete Herbert

Due to a technical issue with accessing the data on lecture schedules, the Re/Play service encountered a problem which caused a number of automatic recordings to be missed at 9 am today (25 November).

The DEO worked with IT Services and the supplier to address this issue, and the data was restored in time for the 10 am lectures. No further problems are anticipated, but we are monitoring the service and working with IT Services and the supplier to ensure this will not happen again.

If you have any questions, please email the Digital Education helpdesk.

Turnitin AI writing reports update

Posted on by digitaleducation

Turnitin has informed us that they updated the AI writing report on 14 October to improve accuracy while keeping false positives to a minimum. This update is part of their ongoing work to respond to the evolution of generative AI.

How will this update affect your AI reports?

Previously generated AI writing reports will not be updated retroactively. However, this improvement may result in some changes in AI scores between draft submissions made before the update and final submissions made after the update.

This update is automatically applied to all new submissions to Turnitin assignments and to Blackboard assignments with Turnitin enabled. You will not see any visual changes to the AI writing report or its highlighting, and you do not need to change any settings to benefit from the update.

Reminder about AI report interpretation

Although this technology has improved since its release, Turnitin AI writing reports can occasionally produce false positives. This means the report might incorrectly flag text as AI-generated. For this reason, Turnitin results should always be reviewed by subject experts and used as supporting evidence, not as a replacement for academic judgement.

If you have any questions about this update, please message us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

Xerte Downtime 1 December 2025

Posted on by Martin Nutbeem

IT Services will be carrying out critical maintenance work on the Xerte Server Monday 1st December. This will involve work on the server and an upgrade to Xerte itself.

Access to both the Xerte authoring tool and projects hosted on Xerte will be intermittently available during the day. This may result in students being unable to view published Xerte objects for short periods during that day. We apologise for any inconvenience this downtime may cause.

The Xerte upgrade will take us to Xerte 3.14. This will bring security improvements, bug fixes, and a variety of enhancements to page templates. There are also improvements to accessibility functionality. You can read more about Xerte 3.14 enhancements in its release notes.

Upcoming Feedbackfruits webinars 26 November 3 December

Posted on by Roberta Perli

As part of the support for the onboarding of Feedbackfruits, a dedicated tool to support Peer Review and Contribution to Groupwork, we are running two webinars useful to those who are already using the tool and those who are interested in using the tool, but these people should still reach out to DEO before putting anything into practice for a consultation.

The sessions will be recorded. Please register to get a link to the recording.

We look forward to seeing you!

  1. Using Feedbackfruits for Peer Review activities  26 November 2025 1400-1500, see details on the registration page
  2. Using Feedbackfruits for Group Member Evaluation activities  3 December 2025 1400-1500, see details on the registration page

Scheduled Turnitin Maintenance, Saturday 25 October, 2025

Posted on by digitaleducation

Turnitin have informed us that their services will be unavailable due to scheduled maintenance on Saturday 25 October between 16:00 and 22:00 BST. During this maintenance window, users will be unable to submit or mark papers, or to view marks, feedback or similarity and AI reports.

Further information is available on the Turnitin status page.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.